Dionysius Areopagites: a Christian Mysticism?
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Hieromonk Alexander (Golitzin) Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA DIONYSIUS AREOPAGITES: A CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM? I. Introduction: A Controversial Figure The mysterious author who wrote under the name of Dionysius the Are- opagite sometime around the turn of the sixth century has been the subject of theological and scholarly controversy for half a millenium.1 With a few re- cent exceptions, this controversy has been limited to the Christian West. It began properly with Martin Luther’s explicit dismissal of «Dionysius» (whom henceforth I shall refer to without the inverted commas) as plus platonizans quam christianizans, «more a Platonist than a Christian», and his warning to «stay away from that Dionysius, whoever he was!» I am myself expert in neither the Reformation generally nor Luther in particular, but I think it not inaccurate to say that he read Dionysius as perhaps the advocate par excel- lence of a theologia gloriae, which is to say, a theological perspective which effectively makes superfluous the Incarnation and atoning death of God the Word, and which does so because it assumes that the human mind of itself is capable, at least in potential, of achieving direct contact with the deity. The great doctor of the Reform saw this pernicious attitude, so in opposition to his own theologia crucis, as especially embodied in the little Dionysian trea- tise, The Mystical Theology, which he read as an example less of truly Chris- tian piety than of an appeal to the autonomous human intellect, hence: «Shun like the plague that Mystical Theology and other such works!» Ever since Luther, though here I should add that I am over-simplifying somewhat, Di- onysius has been by and large a «non-starter» for Protestant theology and devotion, while Protestant scholarship, in so far as it deals with him at all, remains generally — or even emphatically — unsympathetic.2 1 I will be referring to the Greek text of Dionysius in two editions, PG 3, with the column numbers, and, in parenthesis, the page and line numbers of the recent critical edition: Corpus Dionysiacum. Vol. I: De divinibus nominibus / Ed. B. R. SUCHLA (Ber- lin—New York, 1990), and Corpus Dionysiacum, Vol. II, containing the rest of the corpus, including the treatises on the hierarchies, the Mystical Theology, and the Epis- tles, ed. by G. HEIL and A. M. RITTER (Berlin—New York, 1991). Unless otherwise stated, I shall be using the flowing and elegant — though theologically flawed — Pseudo- Dionysius: The Complete Works / Tr. C. LIUBHEID, ed. P. E. ROREM (New York, 1987). 2 On the Protestant reception, see the admirable summary essay by K. FROEHLICH, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century // Pseudo-Dionysi- us: The Complete Works… 33–46. Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 08:22:32AM via free access Hieromonk Alexander (Golitzin) 129 The Roman Catholic approach to the Areopagite is somewhat different. During the Middle Ages, from the twelfth and especially the thirteenth centu- ries on, he was widely popular, even sensationally so. St. Thomas Aquinas, so I understand, quotes him nearly as often as Scripture, something over a thousand times. Apologists for papal authority saw in his treatises on the hierarchies, The Celestial and The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, apostolic-era support for the vision of church order they were seeking to establish and defend. The mystics of the late medieval Rhineland and of England (e.g., Meister Eckhardt and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing), and later on the great spiritual writers of Counter-Reformation Spain, such as SS Theresa of Avila and especially John of the Cross, were likewise well-disposed to Dionysius, especially, once more, to his Mystical Theology. Yet, it is also the case that Dionysius was never approached so-to-speak in toto by any of his medieval and post-medieval, Western admirers (or detractors, for that mat- ter). Rather, bits of his thought — for example, the appeal of his long treatise on The Divine Names, with its exitus-reditus scheme of creation and return to God, to Thomas and other masters of speculative divinity, or the notion of hierarchy to the canonists, or the Mystical Theology to the enthusiasts of mystical piety — were broken-off and applied, as it were, piecemeal to the several interests of his different admirers. Put briefly, it is an effectively frac- tured Dionysius that we find at the end of the Western Middle Ages, with larger or smaller chunks of his oeuvre tacked on to — or, as with Aquinas, assimilated with magisterial elegance into — an already well-established and secure theological Gestalt.3 With the Reformation and its aftermath, Catho- lic attention shifts into a defensive mode, and the Areopagite becomes one element among many — though not a very important one — in the to and fro of debate over the sources and witnesses to tradition. Catholic interest at this point is focused chiefly on defending what we now recognize as indefensi- ble: the apostolic-era provenance of these writings. The advent of modern scholarship, particularly the past century or so, has meant that Catholic schol- ars, with some notable exceptions, have become generally much more am- bivalent, and on occasion actively hostile, toward the Corpus Dionysiacum.4 What we do not find practically anywhere is much of any true sense of the Dionysian writings as a whole, i.e., what they were, and what they were try- 3 See J. LECLERCQ, Influence and noninfluence of Dionysius in the Western Mid- dle Ages // Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works… 25–34; A. LOUTH, Denys the Areopagite (Wilton, 1989) 121–126; IDEM, The Influence of Denys the Areopagite on Eastern and Western Spirituality in the 14th Century // Sob/ECR 4 (1982) 185–200; and P. E. ROREM, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary to the Texts and an Introduction to their Influence (Oxford—New York, 1993), which touches throughout on Diony- sius’ appropriation by the medieval Latin West, if from a perspective not at all friend- ly to Dionysius himself. 4 See the scholars discussed in the section following. Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 08:22:32AM via free access 130 Scrinium III (2007). The Theophaneia School ing to say, and to whom. I shall argue in the essay following that the chief reason we find no conflict over them in the Christian East, or at least not until the influence of Western scholarship during the twentieth century, is because that was their original milieu. Dionysius is an Eastern Christian writer and, moreover, a monastic one.5 He wrote to and for monks, and monks in turn — Eastern ones, at least — have always recognized that fact. They understood him then, and in general they still understand him now, because he and they shared common concerns and a common theological, liturgical, and spiritual Gestalt. This is then my thesis statement for the remarks which follow, and which I offer as a kind of introit into the «mind» of the Dionysian corpus.6 II. Three Question Marks and Three ´Notsª: A Brief Look at over a Century of Dionysian Scholarship The title of my essay, «Dionysius Areopagita: a Christian mysticism», question mark, should therefore really be followed by three question marks. It is widely, though not universally, held that the author of the Corpus Diony- siacum was not only not the Dionysius the Areopagite of Acts 17:34, who shows up as one of the very few prizes carried off by St. Paul following the latter’s sermon at the altar of the «Unknown God» on Mars Hill, but that he was also neither really a Christian, nor a mystic. With the first «not» I must agree. The first clearly datable reference to the Dionysian corpus comes to us from the minutes of the colloquium, between opponents and defenders of the Council of Chalcedon, convoked by the Em- peror Justinian in 532 in order to put an end to the quarrel over christology, or at least so the emperor hoped. The hope was in vain, as it turned out, but in the course of discussion the anti-Chalcedonians cited one Dionysius the Areo- pagite who, they said, had lent apostolic-era approval to their position on the single nature of the incarnate Word by writing in his fourth epistle of Christ’s «single, divine-human activity». Metropolitan Hypatius of Ephesus, speak- ing for the pro-Chalcedonian side, replied tartly that, since none of the earlier fathers had mentioned this «apostolic source», he was not about to admit it 5 This is a point not generally appreciated in the scholarly literature. There is one only article, to my knowledge, devoted to Dionysius’ concept of the monk: R. ROQUES, Éléments pour une théologie de l’état monastique chez Denys l’Aréopagite // Théo- logie de la vie monastique (Paris, 1961) 283–314, which is excellent as a summary of the Dionysian text, but entirely insensitive to its roots in Christian Syria. I must con- fess that I am nearly unique in drawing attention to the latter, and quite unique in stressing it as I do. 6 It is also a kind of offering to my father in God, Aimilianos, retired abbot of the monastery of Simonos Petras, Mount Athos, who provided me with my essential insights into the Dionysian mind. Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 08:22:32AM via free access Hieromonk Alexander (Golitzin) 131 into evidence, either.7 In spite of the good Metropolitan’s hesitations, Diony- sius proved to be an immediate «hit» in the Chalcedonian and even Nestorian (!) worlds as well. The terms he invented, such as most notably the word, «hierarchy», and the phrase, «mystical theology», spread with remarkable speed.8 Ten or twenty years after the colloquium, Bishop John of Scythopolis in Palestine would write the Scholia on the corpus which cemented its reputa- tion and which have accompanied it ever since.9 Even sooner, perhaps con- temporaneously with or even a little before the colloquium, a certain Sergius of Reshaina would translate Dionysius into Syriac, where he immediately shows up in the writings of the rather strange, Syrian Christian mystic, Stephen bar Sudaili.10 In the following century the greatest theologian of the later Byzan- tine era, the monk and saint Maximus the Confessor, would hold Dionysius in the highest regard.